The replacement of commas with vertical bars can be done much more easily:

while (<IN>) {
    tr/,/|/;
    print OUT;
}
[download]

As for this part of your code:

     $string1 = $var7;
     substr($string1, 24) = "H:\";
     $string2 = substr($string1,25,2);
     $string3 = substr($string1,-13);
     $finstring = $string1.$string2.$string3;
[download]

No way for anyone here to know what $string3 would be, without seeing some of the data. There is almost certainly a better/easier way to accomplish what you're trying to do, but you'll need to post a reply with more info about the data.

Oh, and here is a one liner that will change , to pipes or in fact do any sort or search and replace s/find/replace/g on a whole file:

perl -pi.bak -e 's/,/|/g' <file>
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This does an inplace edit of <file> and writes a copy of the original to file.bak. You need to use " instead of ' on Win32.

perl -pi.bak -e "s/,/|/g" <file>
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

You will need to show us some of the data you are parsing and what you hope to get out. Your use of substr makes very little sense. Here is some code that compiles for a start as uses an array for the fields as well as the ever faithful join. Note how we use $infile and $outfile so we can include them in our error messages easily.....

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
my $infile  = 'c:/doclist.chr';
my $outfile = 'c:/doclist.txt';

open IN, "<$infile"  or die "Couldn't open $infile, $!";
open OUT,">$outfile" or die "Couldn't open $outfile, $!";
while(<IN>) {
   chomp;
   my @fields = split /,/;
   my $string1 = $fields[6];
   do { warn "Empty field 7"; next } unless $string1;

   # this will keep the first 24 chars of string, throw out the rest a
+nd
   # then append H:\ to it.    # need \\ here or it won't compile
   substr($string1, 24) = "H:\\";
   # this will return :\ as  we get 2 chars LEN from pos 25
   my $string2 = substr($string1,25,2);
   # this will set $string3 to the last 13 chars of the string
   my $string3 = substr($string1,-13);

   my $finstring = $string1.$string2.$string3;    
   my $out = join '|', @fields[0..5], $finstring, "\n";
   print OUT $out;
}

__DATA__
substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN,REPLACEMENT
substr EXPR,OFFSET,LEN
substr EXPR,OFFSET

Extracts a substring out of EXPR and returns it. First character is at
+ offset 0, 
or whatever you've set $[ to (but don't do that). If OFFSET is negativ
+e 
(or more precisely, less than $[), starts that far from the end of the
+ string. 
If LEN is omitted, returns everything to the end of the string. If LEN
+ is 
negative, leaves that many characters off the end of the string. 
If you specify a substring that is partly outside the string, 
the part within the string is returned. If the substring is totally ou
+tside the 
string a warning is produced. 

You can use the substr() function as an lvalue, in which case EXPR mus
+t itself 
be an lvalue. If you assign something shorter than LEN, the string wil
+l shrink, 
and if you assign something longer than LEN, the string will grow to a
+ccommodate 
it. To keep the string the same length you may need to pad or chop you
+r value 
using sprintf(). 

An alternative to using substr() as an lvalue is to specify the replac
+ement 
string as the 4th argument. This allows you to replace parts of the EX
+PR and 
return what was there before in one operation, just as you can with sp
+lice().
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

Tachyon,

 print"463694|BROOKS JR|JAMES|Arnold Markoe|1/17/03|MD Wkly Note|H:\17
+\00004DA5.0057\\00004DA5.005|

479309|WALDMAN|MELVI|Arnold Markoe|1/17/03|MD Wkly Note|H:\16\00004DE0
+.0056\\00004DE0.005|\n";
[download]

Why is printing for example "\\00004DA5.005|" the extra stuff. I only need $fields10..5|H:\<subdir>\<file.ext>' I'll appreciate your help I modified the code that you send me as follows:

 print "#! perl -w

use strict;
my $infile  = 'c:/doclist.chr';
my $outfile = 'c:/doclist.txt';


#use File::Find;

#use File::Copy cp;

   
   open IN, "<$infile"  or die "Couldn't open $infile, $!";
   open OUT,">$outfile" or die "Couldn't open $outfile, $!";


   ##   print OUT join '|', split /,/ while <IN>;

  while(<IN>) {
   chomp;
   my @fields = split /,/;
   my $string1 = $fields[6];
   do { warn "Empty field 7"; next } unless $string1;

   # this will keep the first 24 chars of string, throw out the rest a
+nd
   # then append H:\ to it.    # need \\ here or it won't compile

   my $string_header = $string1;

   substr($string_header,0,24) = 'H:';

   # this will return :\ as  we get 2 chars LEN from pos 25
   my $string2 = substr($string1,26,2);


   # this will set $string3 to the last 13 chars of the string
   my $string3 = substr($string1,-13);

   my $finstring = $string_header.$string2.$string3;
    
   my $out = join '|', @fields[0..5], $finstring, "\n";

   print OUT $out;
}
exit;
\n";
[download]

As I have tried to explain to you your use of substr is not going to do what you want. However we need to see

1 the exact input data (comma separated)

2 the exact output data (pipe delim) that you want to generate from 1

If you are just trying to get rid of part of the file path you need to use a s/// regex or split $fields[6] on the '\', select the parts you want, join these bits back together with '/' and then join the whole thing with '|'.

  while(<IN>) {
   chomp;
   my @fields = split /,/;
   my $path_str = $fields[6];
   do { warn "Empty field 7"; next } unless $path_str;
   my @path = split "\\", $path_str;
   # remove null fields if you really have \\ in there
   @path = grep { $_ } @path;
   # assuming you want to remove the 17 and 16 dirs in the example
   my $fixed_path = join "\\", @path[0,2,3]
   my $out = join '|', @fields[0..5], $fixed_path, "\n";
   print OUT $out;
}
[download]

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print

print OUT "$var1,"|",$var2,"|",$var3,"|", ...
          ^
[download]